The rise, fall and resurrection of Brendan Fraser: from sexual abuse to tears of emotion in Venice

Most of those who saw the photos from the previous months or from the introductory press conferences may have been surprised by the physical appearance of Brendan Fraser. He is seen to be overweight, far from the perfect physical shape of when his only costume in a movie was a loincloth. Others may have also been struck by just seeing him at a big event. His career seemed long extinct. Brendan Fraser, the actor from George of the Jungle and of the saga The Mummyis back. On Sunday, at the Venice festival, he presented The Whale, directed by Darren Aronofsky. Fraser plays a 600-pound literature professor. He grew fat for the role, even though most of the characterization involves prosthetics, makeup, and effects. The physical transformation, according to specialists who have already seen it, is amazing and is part of a Hollywood tradition nurtured by Robert De Niro, Christian Bale or Daniel Day Lewis. On Sunday after the official pass of The Whale, the public stood up and applauded the actor for more than six minutes. Fraser thanked her and tried to leave the room. The applause intensified and forced him to remain, to allow himself to be covered by the ovation, to accept it. He got emotional and started crying. In those tears was the effort of those months, the pride of having been up to a challenging role, the pain of all the previous failures, the desperation of more than a decade to know that he was out of the big game, and the emotion and perplexity to know that he had succeeded. There is talk of an Oscar nomination, that it will be an obligatory presence in the awards season. Brendan Fraser, after a fall that seemed definitive, has returned.

It seems like for a long time.

His first film appearance was in 1991. An imperceptible role in Dogfight, The Last Bet, with River Phoenix. Theirs was a collective scene, a sailors’ fight in a bar. That debut made him very happy for several reasons. He was on a shoot for the first time, he received the Actor’s Guild card and, finally, he was going to appear in a movie. Minutes before the director yelled Action, an attendee approached him and asked if he would allow himself to be thrown into a pinball game in the middle of the fight. They were going to film that moment apart. Brendan immediately agreed. He felt like a star for a while (he didn’t care about the blows due to the impact against the machine and the injury to one of the ribs) and, in addition, his check came with a bonus of 50 dollars because his task as a double was added to the bolus .

Then came two projects that made him known. He starred Encino Man (starting an acting habit that accompanied him for more than a decade: spending more time with the torso without clothes than with it) and School Tieswhich meant the launch of a generation of actors: Matt Damon, Ben Afleck, Chris O’Donnell. Integrating that cast put the spotlight on him but he had no luck in the later cast: Brendan did not get the prestigious roles. At that moment he didn’t care. With George of the Jungle it was an unexpected box office success. Millions of dollars arrived, magazine covers, offers for big productions.

Absolute consolidation was with The Mummy. A blockbuster that ended up becoming a trilogy. He alternated these successes with commercial films that were not, which ended up being a bad business, and with projects with greater artistic aspirations such as Gods and Monsters.

The roles for which the public paid a ticket to see him were in which he lived adventures and performed feats with his body. Brendan worked obsessively on his physique. For George of the Jungle He trained 8 months. Someone said that it was a movie that could lead the box office but that it was never going to win an award. One critic responded: “Brendan Fraser’s chest could win the Oscar for best makeup.” Another of his secrets was that he interpreted each risk scene, without the need for doubles. The aura of the actor who puts the body believed that he benefited. But very soon the pain began, the injuries, the operations to correct the damage caused by the falls and filming accidents.

The public associated Brendan Fraser with the roles he played. Somewhat naive, how come from another place, someone who constantly has to be taught the rules of the game, trustworthy, always perplexed, somewhat inoffensive and slightly ignorant.

The comedies in which he took part failed. It wasn’t bad luck. They were flimsy projects with flat scripts and too easy resolutions, they are no risk. Perhaps hindsight should stop at the films that became box office phenomena. That success is harder to explain than subsequent defeats.

Not even prestige accompanied him when he acted in a film that won the Oscar for best picture. Crash it is, almost unanimously, considered the worst of all those ever awarded by the Academy. On the other hand, having a choral structure, Brendan’s intervention was very minor.

The flops piled up as if the public no longer had an interest in seeing it, as if what was worth seeing now was the resounding fall of the unlikely star.

Later, as usually happens, everything related to Brendan Fraser was seen in that key, in that of failure, in that of the fallen angel. Fraser, The Soulless.

Thus, a forced laugh at an awards ceremony, at a joke by Robert De Niro, became a meme and a reason for global ridicule. Or an interview without much energy and with somewhat erratic responses circulated through social networks to finish stoning him.

And over the years, he was also losing his freshness and Olympic fitness. He added weight, his cheeks puffed out, his looks were no longer that of an action hero. His smile that generated confidence and tenderness became considered goofy.

His personal life also presented several problems. In 2007 he separated from his wife Afton Smith, whom he had met in 1993 at a party at Winona Ryder’s house, another fall from the sky. They had three children. The oldest, Griffin, is on the autism spectrum. Brendan speaks of him with great pride and always highlights what he teaches the rest of the family every day. The divorce not only affected him emotionally and forced him to deal with loneliness. He had his share of public scandal when Afton claimed for the sum that the actor gave him monthly for food. The initial arrangement, which was about $900,000 a year, according to Brendan, was impossible for him to fulfill with his newfound ex-star status. No one called him anymore and the millionaire salaries for big productions no longer entered his account.

The physical pains drove him crazy and limited his movements. The knees, the waist, the back, the operation to repair a damaged vertebra. He was also affected by the death of his mother.: The interview that went viral in which he is seen with his eyes on the ground, stammering and somewhat uncoordinated was days after he lost her. Grief and pain were too present even if the public did not know it.

His re-entry was modest, gradual and not very ambitious. Choosing better projects was made a priority, regardless of the importance of the role in the plot. So he joined The Affair, the prestigious television series. That supporting role made critics and much of the public begin to see him with new eyes. From that moment he accumulated several similar roles -sporadic, one-season, minor, contained but intense- in series: Trust, Condor, Doom Patrol.

In 2018 in an interview with GQ magazine, a great profile that showed other aspects of the actor, Brendan Fraser recounted that in 2003 at an event, Philip Berk, the president of the Association of Foreign Journalists in Hollywood, reached behind his back, touched one of his buttocks and then with a finger repeatedly kissed his perineum. He only managed to take her hand away after a few seconds and left the place without saying anything. He was only able to recount this situation fifteen years later. Berk denied the allegations. He said that nothing like that happened and that it was just a joke. Some time later, Berk was expelled from the Association for the racist content of some emails. Brendan blamed this incident -which has not been confirmed by other sources nor has it had a judicial review- of his mental weakness and of having been thinned out of certain areas of Hollywood for years, since the man was very powerful. Philip Berk replied that if an actor is a fundraising leader, the whole world wants him at his events, celebrations and award ceremonies, regardless of what a journalist thinks. Maybe the reason they didn’t call him was that no one wanted to be in photos with someone who was already in the past.

In addition to the premiere of The Whale, Fraser is waiting for Killers of The Flower Moon, the new Martin Scorsese film, among other works to which he has already committed. His phone has rang again.

Now is the time for the ovations. The laudatory notes will come, the prizes, the projects that once again bring him millions of dollars in salaries. Hopefully he picks the right scripts.

The come back by Brendan Fraser is another story that must be filmed sometime. A rapid ascent, a boom that seems eternal but that undoes too quickly and the abrupt, resounding fall that seems to find no bottom. And then, of course, the third act, the resurrection from the depths, unexpected and luminous. His story will go on but somewhere, sometime the movies have to end. So the final scene of his biopic could well be located in Venice: the ovation on Sunday and his tears for the return of which even he himself doubted.

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